The present invention refers to a vehicle drive plant including two or more prime movers operating upon a common output shaft and relates to the following applications filed simultaneously herewith: Ser. No. 149,761, entitled "A Vehicle Transmission"; and Ser. No. 149,760, entitled "A Vehicle Drive System".
Considerable advantages with respect to production costs, spare part stock, as well as service and maintenance in general are obtainable if one, or a few basic types of prime movers can be combined, instead of relying upon a selection from a series of power units with stepwise increasing outputs at the units. Depending upon the power required for a specific car, you install two, three or even four of them in combination. The term prime mover will here mean any type of internal combustion engine, as well as gas turbines. There may be one standard and one supercharged version of each basic engine, the two versions being identical in most respects.
When coupling two or more prime movers to a common output shaft great care must be taken to utilize the available space in a rational manner, i.e. interconnecting the prime movers in a space saving manner, while simultaneously making the power transfer means between the prime mover inputs and the common output shaft strong and rigid, so the various components are not subjected to undue wear caused by deformations of the entity. A further consideration is that the components should be easily accessible for inspection and servicing.
It is an obvious advantage to be able to use like engines within the plant, but when mounting two such engines end to end with their shafts aligned, one has to face the problem, that the shafts of the two prime movers seemingly will rotate in opposite directions in relation to the interposed base block. In order to combine the outputs it will therefore be necessary to introduce some kind of reverse element in the gear train.